Ukraine: Are we Russia's next target for invasion?

August 16, 2008|By Brian Bonner, McClatchy Newspapers

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia's invasion of Georgia has unsettled this former Soviet republic, which like Georgia has applied for NATO membership but now fears that the U.S. could do little to prevent similar Russian action here.

"If the West swallows the pill and forgives Russia the Georgian war, the invasion of 'peacekeeping tanks' into Ukraine will just be a matter of time," Oleksandr Suchko, the research director of the Kiev-based Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, wrote on Ukrainska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), a leading online news site.

Still, not everyone here thinks Russia would invade Ukraine, which is nine times larger than Georgia, 10 times more populous and much better armed. Many note, moreover, that Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, is highly unpopular and isn't expected to win re-election in 2010.

Yet Ukraine has a long-standing issue with the presence of Russia's Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol, a holdover from when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. Many in Ukraine want the Russians gone in 2017, when the lease deal expires.

Russian politicians also provoke Ukrainian ire by reminding them that the Crimean peninsula was a gift from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, giving rise to fears that Moscow might stoke secessionist sentiments in the area, which is part of Ukraine but inhabited predominantly by ethnic Russians.

Many also suspect Russian involvement in the nearly fatal poisoning of Yushchenko, who fell ill while he was a presidential candidate in 2004. The Kremlin backed his rival, whose path to power was blocked when the democratic Orange Revolution overturned the results of a rigged election.